


Avenging angels

by Dissenter



Series: Narrative law [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, BAMF Nick Fury, Body Horror, Bruce Banner is in the loop, Clint is good at networking, Curses, Demonic Possession, Demons, Everyone knows more than they're saying, Fairy Tale Curses, Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Logic, Family Stories, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Magic, Magical Realism, Nick Fury Knows All, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to Norse Religion & Lore, Swan Maidens, Witches, bringing back the dead, knight errant, loss of free will, steve and bucky have issues, unholy abominations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-14
Updated: 2016-03-27
Packaged: 2018-04-14 18:17:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4574877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dissenter/pseuds/Dissenter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The age of reason is ending, the old laws are taking hold, and the Avengers are unhealthily entangled with curses, and magic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The reflections of Dr Jeykll

**Author's Note:**

> So what started as a oneoff Daredevil oneshot, has now expanded into a full on AU encompassing the entirety of the MCU. Yeah, basically this got really out of hand, but somehow I can't bring myself to regret it. I recommend you read "Let the Devil Out" first as it has important background info, and helps set the scene.  
> And we open with Bruce's chapter.

Bruce had only ever half believed. He was after all a man of science. Still there are some stories it’s hard to shake, no matter how irrational they may be. Some things _feel_ true, even as your mind refuses to accept them.

His father had been a man of science too, when he wasn’t busy being a man of violence. It was his mother who’d told him the stories, even as his father provided his own kind of proof. Demon curses in the family line, his father had always been so angry when he caught his mother telling him. Angry enough to let the demon show through. He’d always hated Bruce, which is part of why Bruce is sure he had at least some idea of what he was for all the god it did any of them. He must have known it was passed through the bloodline. And while he’d always been angry to hear Bruce’s mother tell the stories he’d never out and out said they weren’t true either, never denied it.

Bruce had been too young when the demon finally won, when his father finally broke, and his mother died because of it. That night he knew his father had a demon in him, but after, with his father locked away and his mother gone, it had all seemed like a child’s nightmare. As he’d grown older he’d taken refuge in the comforting certainties of science. Adult Bruce was a sceptic. The things he’d believed without question as a scared child, were slowly pushed aside in favour of cold rationality. He didn’t want to believe. And yet for all that a part of him still did. The part that could feel the demon rage snarling under the weight of the chains he placed over it. Something wasn’t right in him, wasn’t quite human, and it brought to mind blood, and fear, and the sound of his mother screaming, he had to get it out. But he’d only half believed, and he had no trust in magic. Bruce Banner was a man of science, and where magic had cursed him he believed science might hold the cure.

He should have known better. Magic follows different rules to science and their interactions are always disastrously unpredictable. Looking back, the whole sequence of events had been a special kind of stupid, using an untested scientific theory to try and supress an unsubstantiated mystical threat he could barely bring himself to admit existed. Now his demon has its own indestructible form, and his own self-control is the only thing that can keep it from rampaging. Somehow he’s managed to give his inner monster superpowers, and the most terrifying thing is, it could have been so much worse. He’s seen what happens to people without his level of control, the ones with a true demon in their souls and no knowledge of how to rein it in. That _thing_ General Ross ended up creating, the thought of the _wrongness_ of it is still enough to make him sick. It could have been worse, but it’s still bad enough to make him want to _die_ on bad days. His father had been bad enough, _smell of alcohol, blood on the carpet, screaming._ But Bruce had meddled in things man was not meant to know, had ignored the warnings of countless horror films, and science fiction novels, and combined magic and science. Mad science always turns on its creator, and now because of his arrogance the demon has unimaginable strength, and it _will not die._ At least his experiments seem to have crippled the cold, inhuman intelligence that characterises demonkind. It is aware, but it is no longer cunning. Still the brute force of its rage is breathtaking, he turns away from the memories of destroyed villages, screaming children, families that will have nowhere to go when winter comes.

On the plus side the years on the run in third world countries have forced him to admit the truth to himself. Magic is real, demons are real, and there is one woven into his soul. He’d visited shamans and cursebreakers, and mystical monks in Tibet, and they’d all said the same thing. It was part of him, generation upon generation bound to a demon, the curse was too deeply entrenched to break. Any attempt to remove it would kill him. Would kill him, but not necessarily the demon, and that was a risk they were not willing to take so they turned him away. He’d tried to kill himself after that. Tried, and found out that the demon wouldn’t let him die. That had been a bad day.

But his travels had given him perspective. There were worse curses out there, he remembered a young girl who had been driven so mad by the phantom sense of insects crawling over her body that she had to be tied up. Otherwise she tried to skin herself. It gave him perspective, and it helped him figure out techniques to manage his condition, so that when the Black Widow came to call him up for the Avengers he went. His control wasn’t perfect but hopefully it would be good enough. And at least if the demon took hold around others with unnatural powers they might stand a chance of stopping him. He forcibly supresses the thoughts of broken people, and broken homes, who’d had nothing to begin with and less than nothing now. At least if he destroys New York the people could get an insurance payout.

Wonder of wonders it had been good enough. He hadn’t killed any allies, he’d managed to help protect New York, and the demon had been so delighted when he gave it permission to smash and destroy things that it hadn’t even grumbled when he demanded it save Tony. Although Tony was an odd one. He had a strange effect on the other guy. When Bruce asked Tony had brushed it off with something vague about old rules, and old codes, and that was enough to set off alarm bells in Bruce’s head. Tony knew more than he was saying about magic, and he was too much a man of science, too much like Bruce himself, to have got the knowledge the easy way. Bruce didn’t push, there were some things you just didn’t ask about, so instead he prayed that it was nothing that would blow up in their faces. It wasn’t a demon, Bruce is pretty sure he’d be able to recognise that, he’s not even sure it’s a curse exactly, but there is something off about Tony, mystically speaking.

Actually it wasn’t just Tony, all of his fellow Avengers were setting of Bruce’s finely tuned supernatural demon senses, in one way or another. He couldn’t quite pin it down, and he wouldn’t ask, but it was there. He wonders if director Fury knows exactly what he’s created in this team, in darker moments he wonders exactly what Fury knows, that he was afraid enough to create such a team, and he shudders at the possibilities. Because Bruce is in the know, and he isn’t an idiot, and he’s spent years on the run associating with the occult subcultures of some of the most mystically active countries on earth and so he’s heard whispers. Whispers of trouble ahead, of darkness falling, of the end of the days of reason. He wonders if even the demon will be able to survive what’s ahead.


	2. Fairytale endings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha's chapter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Natasha's life is a fairy tale, a proper fairytale, with blood and dismemberment, and having to kill people to get your happy ending. It's lucky Natasha is good at that.

Once upon a time in a place that didn’t exist, there was a little girl with a number instead of a name. There were fifty little girls in that place, each of them with their own number. This little girl was number seventeen.

In the beginning there were fifty little girls in the place that didn’t exist, but that wasn’t true for long. The weak ones were the first to die, too human, too afraid, too helpless, nothing all human could survive in that place. They were the first to die, fallen one by one to the harsh training, and the harsher tests. Called on to kill or be killed, all they could do was die, and their blood awakened monsters. Maybe that was their purpose, the cold men who ruled the place couldn’t have honestly expected ordinary little girls to go up against the demon cursed and win. In the beginning there were ten little girls in that place that were nothing but human, after a while there were none.

The weakest were the first to die, but the strongest were next. Unlike the weaker girls, they did not fall one by one at the hands of their peers. They had all known the weak girls were going to die, no-one had foreseen what would happen to the strong ones. Not even the cold men. They had expected the demon cursed girls to be their ultimate weapon, they had not expected that weapon to turn on them. But turn on them it had. One of the more promising of the cursed girls had gone berserk during training, killed the trainer, two guards, and the scientist that was monitoring the results, with a touch that withered living flesh, and she didn’t go down until they put two bullets in her brain. They decided the cursed girls were too dangerous to live, and so that very night they were removed from the dorm room and killed quick and clean. All twenty of the strongest girls in the place, dead in the space of a single night.

The girl known only as number seventeen remembered that night clearly, because that night she was granted both hope and a warning. It was the day she understood that being too strong, could be as deadly as being too weak. You had to be strong, but you also had to be controllable. “Be bold, be bold, but not too bold, lest your heart’s blood run cold”. However it was also the first time she realized that the cold men who ruled her life could make mistakes, and mistakes… could be exploited.

There were twenty little girls left after that, but by the time they graduated there were only three left. Girl number seventeen was the best of them, but she had always taken care to seem less than she was. Just good enough, a tool not a threat. It was easier than she could have imagined. The cold men were only human, they could make mistakes, and number seventeen _breathed_ deception. It was in the blood. Nothing all human could have survived that place, and so in the end seventeen was only _mostly_ human.

She never was entirely sure what her exact heritage was. She had been so very young when they took her. Clint said fae, that one of the gentry must have dallied with one of her ancestors and sired a child. He said it fit, that the fae loved deception, but hated lies and oathbreakers. That they were beautiful, and deadly, and known to take human lovers, and leave children behind. Close enough she supposed although she suspected it wasn’t quite accurate.

It didn’t feel untrue, and yet it wasn’t quite right either. It didn’t quite fit with her stories. Fae belonged to western tales, and all of hers were Russian. It didn’t fit with her stories, and the girl who was once called number seventeen knew her stories. It was the one thing the fifty little girls were allowed to have in that place that didn’t exist. Well, maybe allowed is a strong word, it was tolerated. No-one tried too hard to stop them, and so when the lights were put out, and the fifty little girls were safely handcuffed to their beds at night, they would whisper stories to each other. Each of them had a different story, Yelena used to tell the tale of Koschei the deathless and her usual practical way of speaking would be transformed to draw images in their dreams of his wondrous castle and his evil powers. When Anya told the story of Vasilisa the beautiful her voice was as sweet and soft as always and sent them to sleep gently, after she was gone the others missed that. The other girls all had their stories too, even if they hadn’t survived to earn names of their own, stories of heroes, and spirits, and the witch Baba Yaga. Number seventeen’s own story was the tale of the Firebird and the Princess, and while she may not have had Yelena’s gift for drawing a picture with words, or Anya’s for soothing with the voice it was still her story that the other girls loved best, because they knew it was true. As soon as one impossible task was complete, another would be set, and the price of failure was always death, but maybe, if you survived long enough you might be able to turn the tables, they could all relate to that.

Seventeen had survived in the place that didn’t exist, and as a reward was sent out to places that did exist, under the orders of the cold men, to deceive, and seduce, and steal, and kill. She was good at it. Good enough to become a legend, a nightmare whispered in the shadows by men too hard and bloodied to fear children’s stories. She was good at deception, good enough that people rarely noticed she never outright lied, and if sometimes people didn’t see her when they should have, or trusted her when they shouldn’t, who was to notice or care. She had survived, and become strong enough to turn the story her way.

She wasn’t surprised when the day came that the cold men broke their oaths to her, she wasn’t surprised and yet her anger was still inhuman. Even if she had been watching and waiting for a misstep since that night when she was six years old, knowing the number of girls in the place had just been cut in half. She’d been planning her escape since she first sensed their weakness, and yet still their betrayal angered her. If there was one thing common to fae and their equivalents in every culture it was that they couldn’t abide liars and oathbreakers. She had killed her handler, and as many agents as she knew the identity of. It had been a measure born out of practicality as much as rage. It would make it harder for them to find her, although she could not lie and say rage had nothing to do with it.

Now she has many names, Nastasha, Natalie, Black Widow, Agent Romanov, a thousand others she can barely remember, and she’s human enough to want to atone for her sins, even though she’s inhuman enough to love the smell of blood. Superheroing is a good compromise she supposes especially considering the nature of her companions, every one of them as twisted up by the stories of their lives as she is. Magic, and mad science, and divinity, and fate, all mixed up into one word saving team, it’s as beautiful as a burning chemical factory, all pretty coloured flames and destruction. It’s close enough to a happily ever after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In nearly all cultures there are stories about fae, or djinn, or youkai, or whatever else. Beings that aren't human and don't abide by human morals, and are bound by their word in ways that humans aren't, but aren't exactly evil either. In this universe they're all local variations on the same species and Natasha is descended from the Russian version. (probably some kind of vila, or rusalka)


	3. Hero's journey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yinsen was clever, and more than a little ruthless, He knew how to twist the laws of the narrative to his advantage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one took a while to get right, but my idea for Tony was set from the very beginning. Basically this is Tony as a Knight Errant

Afghanistan changed Tony. He’d always been a man of science, of reason. He’d never believed in magic. Not until he had no other choice.

_Pain, pain, pain, somuchpain. Vague awareness of screaming, oh god was that him. Blackness, oblivion, then pain again, fingers in his chest, can’t move, strapped down too tight, return to darkness. Awakening with cold metal where his heart should be, and a world suddenly turned sideways._

After he got back he’d done his research, trying to figure out what Yinsen had done to him, what he’d become. If there was one thing Tony was good at it was research. That’s how he managed to piece it together. “Knight errant”, that was what he was, sworn to atone for his sins. He even had the shining armour. Magic was real, and magic was cruel, and Tony was a knight, bold and brave. It would have been funny if Tony hadn’t been able to feel his oath twisting him, day by day, to fit the role he had been set.

_Something not right in his head, his heart, his soul. Needs to help, needs to fix things, can’t break his word anymore, tried and spent an hour throwing up in the bathroom, can’t turn away when asked for help, can’t compromise, can’t choose. What the fuck is happening to him._

He’d done his research and found that the world wasn’t what he’d thought, and somehow he’d gotten himself bound by laws of magic and honour that he didn’t understand. He had grown up with robots, and technology, and hard science, no-one had ever told him fairy tales, Howard Stark had been as much a man of science as his son, and he’d had no time for that sort of nonsense. Tony had done his research and found the same story the world over. Of brave warriors bound by honour to atone for their sins. Of the things they achieved in the process. Hercules and his twelve labours, the sons of Tuireann and the impossible tasks they were set, Sir Galahad, bound to protect women, a thousand other tales of blood debts and honour quests.

  _Yinsen dying in his arms, died to save Tony, even after everything. Dying wish, go out and fix what_ _you’ve done wrong, make the world better, help people. “I promise” settling ‘round his soul like steel chains._

Yinsen was not a kind man. He was brave, and honourable, and brilliant, and he had seen and lost far too much to be kind. Tony was sure Yinsen had known exactly what he was doing. Had thought through his every action once he realised just who he had at his mercy, under his care. Magic is always stronger when the world makes no sense, and where does the world make less sense than in a warzone. Afghanistan had been a warzone for far too long. Yinsen knew what magic was. He also knew the first rule of magic, that there is always a price, and he hadn’t cared.

_It’s about honour, at least part of it, honour and grief, and guilt, so much guilt. Innocent blood on his hands, and he’d only been trying to help but intentions mean nothing in the face of consequences and oh god how many people paid for his mistakes. Yinsen’s voice, accusing, commanding, the only real thing through the haze of pain and horror, Tony can’t refuse._

He had wronged Yinsen, in ways that were both unforgivable and unfixable. And yet despite that, and knowing that, Yinsen had saved his life. More than that the man had died for him. There’s magic in that sort of thing, in life debts, and sacrifice, and final requests. He owed Yinsen. Yinsen had the right to ask anything of him, and he had demanded an oath. So now Tony was bound by that oath. The man was no witch, he had no inborn power to curse, no spells passed down through the family. He didn’t really need to be, anyone with an understanding of the laws of magic could set the payment for a life debt owed to them.

_“They call you the merchant of death. My family died by the weapons you made. I will die here because of you. Your hands are stained with the blood of thousands, and yet still, when I found you in my power, I chose to save your life, healed you, and fought for you, and died for you. By the old laws you owe me.”_

Tony had built a suit of armour. Somehow he doubted that was coincidence. It had felt _right_ even before he had known what he was. It felt even more right once he knew. It was amazing how subtle and pervasive the oath he swore could be. It bent the laws of reality, he was sure. He should have died, many times over. Would have done, except that whenever he hits rock bottom, when he’s lying on the floor of his lab with his cold metal heart ripped out of his chest, something shows up to save him, at the last minute. Implausible good luck to soften the trouble that followed wherever he went. His life follows fairytale logic now. That’s part of why he went public, because Howard didn’t believe in fairytales but Tony had done his research and in the old stories secrets always, always led to disaster, and honesty was rewarded in the end, though the path might be hard and cruel.

_Heart stolen from his chest by a man he considered family, poison dripping through his veins, killing him slowly, keeping him alive, carrying a bomb out into the space between the stars, screaming at the emptiness of it. But it’s all worth it because he’s not alone no more nights spent drinking alone in a crowded room, going home with yet another stranger that never looks him in the eyes, emtyhollowpointless, being able to count the number of people who’d cry for his death on one hand. Never again. He’ll never be alone again because he has BruceandClintandThorandCapandNat and they’re as twisted by life and magic as he is, and they saved the world together, and they care. It’s all worth it. He has undergone his trials and gained something wonderful as a result, and life will never be easy again, but at least it won’t be empty, won’t be alone._

He didn’t really regret it, becoming a knight-in-shining-armour, a hero. Despite the fact it would probably kill him one day, that it had cost him a future with the woman he loved, that it had turned his whole life upside down, he still didn’t really regret it. If it weren’t for the duty laid upon him, the world might well have fallen. Would his brave, broken, comrades-in-arms, have been enough if he hadn’t been there, if they’d been one man less. And how long would he have lasted alone, all flashy image and nothing real to live for. He didn’t know and didn’t care to guess.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm thinking Thor next, I've got his chapter halfway done and i'm quite pleased with it so far. I'm planning a mega update of all my current WIPs on the 15th so there probably won't be anything else until then though.


	4. Gods among us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor and Loki are gods. No one else quite gets what that means.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is with thanks to murdershewrote who gave me the idea

Thor is a god. Sometimes he wonders if people have forgotten just what that means. The midgardians treat him as one of their own, as their comrade, and it is only right that they do so, after all he is among other things the god of warriors, and blood brothers, and the human fighting spirit. In days of old his worshippers used to do much the same, to call on him as their comrade, for his aid in battle. It’s just sometimes he suspects they are assigning entirely human motivations to his actions. They see him, see that he looks human, and forget that he is not. He is brave, and loyal, powerful beyond belief, and he is also utterly inhuman.

It’s not so bad that they do it with him. His nature is deeply bound up with humanity, and human nature. He is a God of bravery in combat, of blood brotherhood, and the protection of mankind, and as such he is good to humans. Likes them, grants those who follow him his favour. If they do not understand that he is also the thunderer, the lightning storm, the war God, well only his enemies have cause to know it. As Gods go he is relatively tame. Not safe, never safe, but trustworthy, a fierce dog that must be treated with respect, but can be trusted to guard the home.

That’s half of why Odin had cast him to earth in the first place. So long away from humanity, away from so many of the things that defined him, and he’d started to lose touch with his own nature. The attack on the frost giant’s homeworld had been an act of half-madness and his father had seen that for what it was and acted to repair the damage. He was cast down among humans and bit by bit he’d managed to regain his purpose. Gods need a purpose, it defines them, in ways that he doubts any human could ever understand. He isn’t just God of storms, he _is_ the storm, he doesn’t just love to fight, he _has to_ fight, can feel the fever of battle flowing through the veins of his comrades and enemies alike, and every blow they strike or receive invokes his power. He _cannot_ act contrary to his own nature. And yet these humans think they know him, persist in viewing him as though he can see the world as they do. He could try and explain, he could tell them he fights with them because they are honourable warriors, and he is a war God, he could tell them he loves Jane because he is in part a fertility God and she is the closest thing to a high priestess in this age where men worship technology, he could tell them he lives, and jokes, and feasts with them because they have spilled blood together, and the party after the battle is won is as much a part of him as the battle itself, but he suspects they still wouldn’t understand.

Honestly he does not mind that they forget his nature, he has always been a God of the people, and as long as they follow his way, he does not care if they consciously know it. The thing that troubles him is that they do the same with his brother, and his brother is a chaos God. Wildfire, Wolf-father, lie-smith, trickster. Thor is reliable when it comes to humans, not harmless, no God is ever truly harmless, but he is the defender of humanity and so he is safe as long as the rules and courtesies are observed. Loki is a thousand and one things, but he is never safe. Not to humans, not to Gods, not to anyone.

Loki is a God. That he is jotunn not aesir changes nothing of that fact. His human warrior comrades face him and see Thor’s crazy little brother, see a supervillain, see something that looks very like another human. They think they understand and Thor knows with a certainty borne of millennia with Loki as his brother, friend, uncertain ally, that Loki will take full advantage of that belief, that they will all live to regret it. His comrades have no way to understand just how unpredictably dangerous Loki is. Loki is a trickster, is an aspect of chaos given solid form and his intentions and plans shift and flicker like flames. He is fire, in one moment he warms the home and wards back the dark, and in the next he turns on you, burns you, sets the house alight. There is no purpose to taking it personally for he cannot be otherwise, and that perhaps is where human understanding fails. For Loki to not lie, not deceive, and plot, and destroy, would go against everything he is, would destroy him more utterly than any hulk smash and despite everything Thor does not want his brother gone. He might not be easy or safe to rely on but Loki is the wildcard, the chaotic element that saves you when there seems no way out and nothing to be done. Thor does not wish to think of a world where that chance does not exist.

Loki is wildfire and wolf’s rage wrapped in skin and cunning, he draws power from the world gone mad, from a world of science being warped and unravelled by the growing power of magic. And while Thor may be their father’s biological son, that means little to Gods, their natures shaped by their allegiances, by the world that surrounds them more than simple genetics. Thor may be Odin’s biological son, may be the most favoured son, but in many ways it is Loki who takes after Odin most strongly. Odin is in his own way as much a trickster and deceiver as Loki is. Odin is God of war, the one-eyed general, and while Thor is also a God associated with the heat of battle, it is Odin who embodies war’s cruelty. A cruelty Thor has never been able to match, there is too much of his mother in him, though few people look past the obvious to see it. Like his mother he is also a fertility God, a God of new life and good harvests, the thunderstorm is destructive, but it also waters the land, brings new life. Loki on the other hand, Loki is like their father, and for all that he was not born Aesir, the fact that a God of war stole him as spoils from the battlefield, and a Goddess of motherhood raised him as her own, and a God of blood brothers calls him brother, that matters to the magic that shapes a God’s nature. His power and his nature are kin to theirs as surely as if he were born to them, and it shows. He is so very much Odin’s son. Fire God rather than Gallows God, but with the same edge of deceitful, ruthless brilliance, the same urge towards destruction. Where Loki might burn the world, Odin could leave it a blood drenched battlefield, but either way the consequence is death. Loki is a God, a son of the God of death and war and slaughter. Son of Odin.

 His father, Odin, allfather, Gallows God, wise in the ways of magic and strategy and kingship, God of death, and war, never, ever kind. It is almost certain that his comrades do not understand what his father is, although he suspects Nick Fury might have an inkling, Nick Fury who resembles his father more than any human should. Thor finds the man unsettling, God’s understand human morality and ways of thinking as little as human’s understand Gods, and Thor has to make a conscious effort not to project his father’s thoughts onto this ruthless, one-eyed, human general, who sees more than most, and knows more than he should. Fury is not Odin, is a man not a God, with a man’s motivations, and if he does often act as Odin might, it is for human reasons, for loyalty, and necessity, and a myriad other thoughts and beliefs and feelings, known only to him. Not for God reasons, not because fire burns, and storms thunder, and battlefields attract carrion crows, and a thousand other things that everyone knows to be true, that cannot be otherwise.

Maybe he is being too harsh on his human shield brothers. If a God with millennia of experience in observing the differences between humans and Aesir, finds it hard to see, then how can he fault a group of humans who grew up in a world where God’s did not even exist, when they don’t realize. Gods are human shaped, but alien where it matters most. It’s just that Thor fears, fears that if his loyal warrior comrades continue to disregard what he is, what they are, what the world is becoming then there will be trouble, and God though he is, he might not be able to get them out of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may have also drawn some inspiration from Pratchett and Gaiman for this.


	5. Bury me deep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The dead should stay dead. Phil Coulson didn't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was originally going to put this in a whole seperate AoS fic, but I need to catch up on AoS first, and anyway Coulson totally counts as an avenger.

Something was wrong with him, inside him, inside his head and heart, and soul. Something was w _rongwrongwrong_ and he didn’t know what.

He’d been an ordinary man. No that was a lie. He’d been far from ordinary. He’d been a spy, a shield agent, guide and guard for the avengers. He’d worn suits, and spoken softly, and been one of the most dangerous men alive. But that was all he’d been. A man. A dangerous man, but still a man, still alive.

Humanity was underrated. You didn’t know its value until you lost it. He wondered if this was how the avengers had felt, when they first got caught up in this state where the laws of reality became fuzzy and unpredictable.

Not that he’d known, to start with. That he was losing his humanity that is. Lies upon lies, the stubborn under stains that hold Shield together (don’t ask what the stains are made of because blood is the least of it). Or he had known, but he hadn’t known what he’d known. If that made sense. He’d known he wasn’t right, no matter what Fury said about being resuscitated minutes later, he’d known there was more than that. He’d known something was wrong but he hadn’t known what.

Now he knew. It didn’t help much.

The dead should stay dead. He was an abomination, he could feel it. Had felt it since he first remembered getting back from Tahiti (it’s a magical place, but they never said it was nice magic). He could feel it in the way the world scraped too harsh, too sharp against his senses. In the howling abyss he could see out the corner of his eye at odd moments, that vanished when he turned to look closer. He could feel it in the aching emptiness inside, the need for something he had no words or concept for. He didn’t belong here.

He wasn’t the only one who knew it either. He’d started to stay away from self-proclaimed psychics and sensitives. His presence distressed them. The more professional ones tried to hide it, but they all knew he was wrong. _A crack in the world_ one young man had called him, _“Who knows what might bleed through.”_ Phil hadn’t known then, but it had given him the chills all the same, and now, well lets just say it haunted his nightmares.

The abyss was getting bigger. He saw it almost all the time now, sucking at the corner of his eyeballs. He didn’t try to look any more. Something told him there were things in its depths he didn’t want to see. It was there during team meetings, as he tried to act normal in front of his subordinates, it was there in the field as he ducked bullets and negotiated with enemies and dared not show a moment’s weakness, it was there in his room at night when he dared not close his eyes, for fear of what might come for him as he slept.

Finding out had made things better and worse. On the one hand at least he wasn’t crazy, on the other hand crazy was usually a bit more treatable than being an abomination unto the laws of nature. And he was, oh sweet mercy he was. He’d pressed a knife to his skin, the night after he first found out. Had carved lines into his skin and licked his own blood off his fingertips. It hadn’t felt real. He still wasn’t sure why he did it. He looked at people, comrades, enemies, strangers and sometimes they were like shadows passing across the surface of his mind. He fought it, fought to see people as people, as alive, as real, but it was getting worse, day by day, month by month.

_You warp the world_ one young girl with mystical tendencies had told him, and it was true. He could feel it with a deep down animal instinct that was screaming at him that he shouldn’t exist. He didn’t like to think about what his presence might be doing to his friends. It couldn’t be healthy, spending so much time in the presence of a rip in the fabric of reality.

He’d started hearing whispers, ones that no-one else could hear. They were driving him mad, if he wasn’t mad already. Sometimes he even saw things, flickering shadows, coloured lights, dancing across his field of vision. He was deteriorating. You could only defy the laws of Gods and nature for so long.

He hadn’t wanted to die, he’d wanted to live. He’d wanted to live a great deal, but this was _wrong,_ he hadn’t wanted this. Nick kept trying to justify it, said that he was _needed_ , that there was no other choice. He didn’t understand, there were some things that could never be justified. Some lines that _no-one_ should cross.  He’d wanted to live but he hadn’t wanted _this._

That was the real reason he’d hidden from his cellist. The man she’d loved had died, he’d died and then a terrible thing had been done to him, and maybe he was alive again for a given value of alive, but he wouldn’t drag her into this nightmare. She deserved clean grief, and a loss that would heal in time. The truth would only fester, damage her deeper with each passing day until in the end it destroyed her. No he wanted better for her than that, her lover was dead, he would not pry at the wound.

He was an abomination. He didn’t belong here, but survival instinct was a terrible thing. He would not put himself out of his misery. He clung to his unnatural existence, and did his best to do some good in the world. He thought he was helping. Other people seemed to think so at least, but still he couldn’t shake the creeping feeling that they would all come to regret this in the end. The dead should stay dead, and Phil Coulson hadn’t. There would be consequences.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter is Steve and Bucky, and then I'll wrap the fic up with Clint's POV.


	6. Out of time, out of mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve and Bucky are cursed. They try to adjust.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Steve is angry, Bucky is resigned, neither of them is ok.

Steve doesn’t know if he will ever forgive Peggy. Not necessarily, for what she did to him, or even to Bucky, but because of why she did it. Because she didn’t believe in them, didn’t believe they could stop him. Because she doubted them, she’d crossed a line she was sworn never to cross, and they’d all had to pay the price.

_The soldier knows he is cursed. He spent enough time talking to the deadly little girls who know far too much about the warping of the world. He knows what a curse is, and he knows he must be under one. There is no other explanation for why he is trapped in the dark without past or future or understanding. He wonders sometimes who laid this curse on him and why, whether he deserved it, whether it was done in malice, whether he was even the primary target of the curse. He never dared voice these questions out loud before, they were not the sort of questions that had kept his keepers happy. Now though, now he thinks may be the time to start asking those questions._

Europe had been a mess, dark things crawling out of the shadows in response to all the death, and fear, and misery. Europe had been a mess, and the Commando’s had seen some of the worst of it. Hydra had dabbled in everything from mad science to dark magic, and there wasn’t a single one of the commandos that hadn’t administered a mercy killing more than once. They’d seen plenty of things that went beyond normal scientific explanation, and so when Peggy had admitted that she was a witch, they’d all believed her, and they’d all understood why she refused to use her power to curse their enemy. No matter how easy it might have made things at times, she had her reasons, and they were good reasons. They’d understood, they’d never even considered asking her to cross that line.

She’d made that decision utterly alone, and Steve wasn’t sure he could ever entirely forgive her for that. They were comrades, friends, maybe even lovers if things had been different, he’d trusted her with everything, after he’d lost Bucky she had been the person he trusted the most. She should have talked to him about it, said what she’d been considering. She should have trusted him, confided in him the way he did her. She could have told him anything, she could always have relied on him, he didn’t understand why she didn’t. He didn’t understand why the first he knew about Peggy cursing the Red Skull, was when he hit the cold dark water. He knew it was her, he’d never seen her curse anyone else but she’d worked plenty of minor spells around the unit, to purify water, to deflect unwanted attention, little things to make their work go just a little smoother, he knew the flavour of her magic. He’d known as he’d gone down, Steve was no witch himself but he had a little of the sight, and he’d seen enough in that godforsaken war to know a curse when one hit him.

_The soldier thinks he may have once been a man named Bucky, with a friend named Steve. He remembers things in flashes, street fights, war, brave souled comrades, one of them sticks out in his mind, a woman among men, a witch he remembers her saying. Was she the one who cursed him? If so, why?_

She hadn’t aimed it at him, he knew she wouldn’t do that, but a curse is a brutal indiscriminate weapon and you can never control who gets caught in the backwash. She had aimed at his opponent, at Schmitt, but she’d managed to hit him as well. It was only the backwash, so where the Red Skull had died in the cold alone, Steve had spent seventy years sealed away in that same cold. He didn’t remember it all thank god, not consciously at any rate, he doesn’t like to think about what it would have done to his mental state if he had. But he still wakes up from nightmares, about ice and dark water, and somewhere in those seventy years he’d lost almost everything.

_Bucky doesn’t hate the woman he now remembers as Peggy. He’s seen and done too much since, so much of it unforgivable. He’s not sure he still has it in him to hate. He’s just so tired. Seventy years of cold, and solitude, and killing, with his soul being scoured clean every time his heart screamed no more. She must have been powerful, more powerful than she knew, for her rage and desperation to have such an effect even in the backwash._

Steve could barely recognise the world he woke up to. Shield had given him a pop culture crash course and conscripted him without so much as a by your leave, and considered their work done. They didn’t understand what he was. They’d grown up on stories of the perfect soldier so of course when they found him it made perfect sense to sign him back up with the military in one form or other. Bring him up to date with modern slang and star wars and he’d feel right at home. He’d never felt so lost.

He’d signed up to fight Nazis, to fight Hydra. To fight genocide, and torture, and human experimentation that could give the devil himself nightmares. Everything had been so clear, and maybe his side hadn’t been perfect, had been only human, but considering what they were facing there had never been any point at which he’d doubted he was on the right side. Now he looked at the wars America was involved in, had been involved in, and he felt like washing his hands of the lot of it. That fucking mess in Vietnam alone was enough to disillusion him, millions of people dead because president after president had been too proud and stubborn to call it quits and admit they should have never been there anyway.

It wasn’t like he’d ever been much of a patriot, star-spangled costume notwithstanding. Not in the way modern people seemed to understand it at least, all this “my country right or wrong” nonsense. He’d cared about people, didn’t like bullies, and the Nazi’s had been the biggest bullies around back in the forties. Now he had the uncomfortable feeling the biggest bully around might be America itself, Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, countless others that got swept under the rug, it was nothing he was prepared to support. He’d signed up to fight fascism, not to support a military industrial complex that google and hours of research could only give him the outlines for.

_The Soldier was sent to kill a man named Captain America, and instead fought a man who he thinks is called Stevie. A man who called him Bucky in a tone that bit deep into the Soldier’s frozen heart. He remembered a scrap of a fairytale, where the ice in the little boy’s heart was melted by the tears of the girl who had come to find him. He wondered if that was what was happening there. He cannot help Stevie, the chains of ice bind him too tightly, but deep down inside, where the cold men can’t go and the curse doesn’t touch he hopes, and prays that Stevie can save them both and the world with him, because the man named Bucky would have rather died than be a part of this._

Steve had always wanted to see the future. Had hoped humanity might advance into a better world, and it turns out the worst kind of curses give you exactly what you want. Seventy years in the future and still poor people in America couldn’t afford decent medicine, seventy years and still there were people hungry on the streets, seventy years and all people had managed to do was find new ways to share a truly staggeringly large number of cat videos, and amateur pornography.

Maybe he was being a little harsh, the racism was a lot better at least, and unemployment was down a bit, but he’d just, expected something… better from humanity’s bright future. Was this really the future he and Bucky had died for?

He’d stuck with Shield because he hadn’t known what else to do. He had no skills, aside from soldiering and art and he didn’t have the background to make a living at art anymore, not after missing seventy years of changing artistic fashion. He had no skills, no living friends, no understanding of the modern world. So he’d stuck with Shield, and Shield had thrown him at an alien invasion. That had been a relief, a clear and obvious bad guy, a team of misfits with good intentions, a mission. It had helped that all of the avengers were already so saturated with magic that there was little chance of his curse rubbing off on them.

_The Soldier knows that Stevie is working with girl number seventeen. He’s glad, he’d always rather liked seventeen. He’d been quietly impressed when she’d managed to break herself free. Girl number seventeen, and Stevie, and that new guy Sam, who seemed decent, and honest, if not quite human. Those three together were unravelling the web of lies and shadows that surrounded Shield-that-was-Hydra, dragging it out into the light. They wouldn’t let it go, kept digging as he fought them at every turn, and because they were the heroes, they won and he felt the curse’s hold on him fray and snap as girl number seventeen, who was now called Natasha, spoke the truth in the face of lies, exposed the darkness to daylight and watched it burn away._

Sometimes Steve wonders just what it says about him, that he can feel relief at an alien invasion. He just felt so lost. Still does really. That’s the things with curses, even if you do manage to break them they leave scars. Sleeping beauty woke up a hundred years later, and the story never tells how much it must have hurt seeing how the world had moved on without her. The shield psychologist told him he’d adjust, he’d bitten his tongue to keep himself from respectfully suggesting she was full of bullshit. This wasn’t like trying to adjust after spending a few years as a POW, a matter of catching up on current events, and dealing with the fact that your girlfriend found someone else. It was nothing like. Steve’s whole world was dead and gone, and forgotten and the world that had replaced it was the same in all the ways that hurt the most and different in all the ways that had once made it bearable. The psychologists had no frame of reference for something like this, no-one did, and it wasn’t helped by the fact that they kept on trying to treat him as a soldier. They’d classified him as a soldier so the closest approximation of his situation they could think of was the same programme they used for long term POW’s. If they’d just asked them he would have told them, what he was feeling was nothing like that. One moment he’d been in a world he knew, and understood, and belonged, and it may not have been perfect but it was home, then the next moment he was displaced, an exile, alone. They would have been better off treating him like a refugee.

_Bucky saw Stevie and he wondered if the Power of Friendship, would be enough to break the curse. On both of them. After all Stevie was as cursed as he was, if in a different way, different expressions of the same spell. All the years that weighed so heavily on Bucky, Stevie had missed entirely, he was like sleeping beauty, or Rip Van Winkle, a man out of time, frozen, displaced lost. Bucky was more like the children of Lir, trapped for generations in a form not his own, and when he finally regained his humanity the full weight of the years bore down on him. The same curse expressed so very differently, and seeing Stevie was the first time in years he felt its hold over him weaken. Friendship and loyalty had power where magic was concerned, and Stevie had both in spades, so Bucky, who was the Soldier had hoped, hoped that maybe there might be a way out. He didn’t know what to do when Stevie succeeded._

He’d lost everything, but he was dealing. He’d survived with nothing before, survived and fought and refused to lie down. He could do it again, he could rebuild his life. He’d been dealing, he’d made new friends, Natasha, Sam, Tony, Bruce, Cint, Thor, he’d found a new mission which wasn’t that different from the old mission, defending the world from aliens instead of Nazi’s. Things had been getting better. He should have known the curse wasn’t done with him yet. Peggy, had been stronger than any of them had known, no curse cast by her would be so easily appeased. He shouldn’t have been so surprised when things got worse, when he found Hydra risen again at the heart of Shield, when he took time to think about the darkness and magic that was flowing stronger through the world now than it had during the second world war and he knew what it meant, when he found his best friend alive and broken and as cursed as he was.

Bucky had run, and a small guilty part of Steve is almost glad. He’s not sure he’s ready to face Bucky, or more accurately to face the ways Bucky has changed. The changes in the world were hard enough to face. He’s not sure he can deal with changes in the man who had been brother, friend, comrade, lover to him. Not yet. Bucky ran and took that issue out of his hands. He’ll search for Bucky, but Bucky is an assassin, he knows how to disappear into the shadows. Steve will search and Bucky will let him find him when both of them are good and ready, and maybe then they can start healing.

_He broke free, was himself again, was a man again for the first time in seventy years, and he felt every year of his age and more. He’d lived too long and seen too much, the world had changed slowly in front of his eyes, and the weight of his experience tainted every conversation, every word, every interaction with the rest of humanity, all so painfully innocent. He couldn’t face Stevie. Not yet. He needed time, and while Stevie is still looking for him he knows he understands. Curse wounds don’t heal cleanly. Stevie has his new friends, his new life, he’s learning to adjust to what the curse has done to him. He’ll be ok while Bucky take some time to try and do the same._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only one more chapter, and that's Clint. I'm pretty sure I know how its going to go.


	7. The tangled web of life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint is pissed that he has to give the rest of the avengers the magic 101 talk, but he loves them anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the fic is finished. The series is not, but that's a challenge for another day.

The avengers are properly fucked up. Clint could see that from the start. They’re fucked up even _before_ you start getting into all the messed up magical shit, and when you do… Well Clint’s been around but it’s still one of the prettiest messes he’s ever seen. Where does Fury even find these people, and what the hell was he thinking putting them all on the same team. The sheer amount of karma and luck and destiny they’re likely to attract is enough to start a minor apocalypse, Fury _knows_ that, so why the hell would he chance it.

Stupid question. Fury decided to chance it because he thought it would be necessary. Clint keeps his ear to the ground, he knows that magic is making a comeback, and not in a good way. Fury put this team together because he thinks that apocalyptic levels of shit are headed their way and they’re going to need a team  that can deal with it. Fury is probably right. He usually is when it comes to predicting apocalyptic levels of shit headed their way. Clint’s never actually asked if Fury is a seer, some questions just aren’t polite, but Clint has a bit of a sixth sense for the supernatural and the vibes he gets off Fury are eerily similar to the ones he used to get off Madame Cassandra back at the circus, who did special readings for people in the know.

Clint was a little baffled at first as to why he had been put on the team. The rest of them were all seriously heavy hitters, they had a fucking ancient Norse God, for crying out loud. What did a two bit hedgewitch with a knack for weapons magic, have to offer a team like that. Then he’d met them and it had all started to make sense. They were all powerful in their own right, and most of them had a pretty good idea what they personally could do with magic, but with the possible exception of Bruce none of them had the slightest clue about the broader community. Clint knew the community, two bit hedgewitch he might be, but there was no-one better connected, no-one with a better idea of what might be possible, he knew the big picture in a way that the rest of them just didn’t. And that was how Clint ended up having to give the lot of them the talk. It was awkward. Clint was pretty sure Fury did it on purpose. He would get his revenge for that one day.

They were seriously clueless. Well in Thor’s case it wasn’t so much a case of cluelessness as of being a few thousand years out of date, but the effect was the same. They didn’t know shit. Bruce actually wasn’t too bad for a scientist, knew his basics along with a few more esoteric details, must have been all that time on the run in South East Asia. But Tony was every magic teacher’s worst nightmare, scientist to the core and he wanted a rational explanation for _everything._

At least he knew what he was, he’d figured out something wasn’t right after Afghanistan, and he’d done his research and mostly come to terms with it by the time Clint came to give him the talk. Nat on the other hand still wasn’t sure. She knew she wasn’t quite human, and Clint’s senses indicated some sort of fey ancestry, but without any kind of family history it was impossible to find out any kind of details. It left her a mystery. Clint still has this uneasy feeling that mystery might come back and bite them in the backside one day.

And then there was Steve. Shit now that was a mess, collateral damage of a particularly nasty curse, plus subject of mad science experimentation, throw in a bit of PTSD and a whole lot of culture shock and well that was Steve. He still refused to talk about any of it, seemed to think that if he ignored magic it might leave him alone. He was wrong of course, he was a marked man now, and not knowing could get him killed. In the end Clint had to have Natasha tie the guy up so that he could give him at least a basic idea of what his fellow avengers could do and what problems might arise as a result of well… Any of their shit.

Somehow Clint had ended up the person in charge of giving the Avengers mystical survival lessons, so it was no surprise when they left him to talk to the new kid. He’d gone in grumbling, the way his luck ran he’d half expected the guy to be a bog standard, unmystical human who didn’t even know magic was real. He’d been wrong. Sam Wilson was like a breath of fresh air. A fully integrated member of the community, with friends and contacts and everything. He was almost tempted to kiss the guy in relief.

“Grandmama was a swan maiden.” Sam had explained casually over beers. “Grandad stole her skin when he caught her bathing in the river where he and his cousins used to hang out. She went back to the sky years ago but not before she’d had six kids, and then those kids had kids, and some of them have had kids of their own too by now, and the whole family is mad for flying. We’ve got six pilots, two basejumpers, and a trapeze artist in my generation alone. We try and keep ourselves in the loop when it comes to magic, we’re only mostly human, after all, and as I’m sure you know, there tends to be consequences to that kind of thing.” Clint had almost broken down in manly tears.

“I think I love you man. You would not believe how clueless the rest of them are. I’d been dreading the thought of having to give the talk _again._ Do you know what a nightmare it was trying to explain the force of narrative convention to _Tony bloody Stark_ skeptic extrodinaire?” Clint wasn’t really whining, just… letting off a bit of steam.

“Oh, ouch, that must have been a nightmare.” At least Sam seemed sympathetic. Clint was pretty sure this would be the start of a beautiful friendship.

He didn’t mind really though. The avengers were a good team, even if they were a lightning rod in a storm. It was kinda nice working with people who were as mystically fucked up as he was. That mind control spell of Loki’s had done a real number on him. That feeling of helplessness. He was just a hedgewitch, self taught, a bit of this and that, stuff he’d picked up from Barney, from the Circus, from whoever he’d met along the way. He had no way of fighting a great working like that. Didn’t stop him feeling like he should have though. That if he’d been just a bit stronger, a bit more formally trained he’d have been able to get that bastard _out of his head_.

But he hadn’t, and working with his fellow avengers at least allowed him to keep some perspective. He wasn’t like Steve who’d lost everything he’d ever known, or Bruce who’d created an unstoppable monster he could barely control, or Nat who tried so hard to fake humanity without even knowing what she was hiding, or Thor who thought he couldn’t see just how far from human the Aesir were. Tony was the one who he felt most sorry for though, although he’d rather have his nails pulled out with rusty pliers than admit it. Tony had lost his free will too. He had more control than Clint did when Loki had him, but duty and honour bound him like chains, and Clint knows better than to think those chains don’t cut deep. There are certain things that Tony cannot do any more, Clint saw him throwing up in the bathroom the last time he tried breaking a promise, and maybe he has more freedom than Clint did, but at least Clint had hope of rescue, of someone breaking the spell. What binds Tony run deeper than any spell, and it will hold him ‘till the day he dies.

The other avengers give Clint perspective, but they also give him strength. Knowing that he has comrades who understand. That’s something worth fighting for. Even if he does have to explain everything to the idiots.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be just Clint, but Sam sneaked in anyway, cause Sam is cool, and Sam as the descendent of a Swan Maiden just makes sense. (A swan maiden is like a Selkie, but instead of being a seal they are a swan. If a human steals their skin they have to stay with them, until they find the skin, at which point they leave again, usually leaving any children they've had behind), Clint is a witch with very little formal training but very good mystical contacts. He has a special talent for magic that enhances his use of weapons e.g. improved accuracy on his arrows.  
> And yes Nick Fury sees the future, nobody knows how well.

**Author's Note:**

> Plan is the Avengers will each get a chapter and then I suspect i'm going to have to start rewatching AoS so that they can have their own fic. Then I guess I'll tie it up at the end with some kind of mega crossover, or maybe not. I'll see how it goes. Let the Devil Out is still a WIP as well. And then there's other fics. Basically i've bitten off more than I can chew, but i'm enjoying this so much that I don't really care.  
> This is not AoU compliant btw because I can't fit my plans for the characters in with events, and in any case people were altogether too well balanced in that film.


End file.
